Friday, April 27, 2012

Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
~2 Timothy 2:15

For roughly 12 years I have followed the quest on which you sent me forth upon. Now I feel as one among the ancients who somehow flew high enough to see the horizon bend, and thus conclude from my own eyes that the world is round, before the heat of the sun melts the wax of the feathers in my wings.

Truth makes many enemies of friends, but few lasting friends from enemies.

I read yesterday that: "Any child can blurt out the truth, without thought to the consequences. It takes great maturity to appreciate the value of silence." (http://halfhalf.posterous.com/dont-work-be-hated-love-someone) But it also takes a special kind of bravery, or perhaps stupidity, to seek and speak the truth in all contexts.

What is the truth worth? Our entire lives are spent in the single flash of a single strobe light of a single Saturday evening party, in all of time. One slow moment of truth and detail played out in a slow motion, like a clip from the matrix slightly changing angle in silence, before the true speed of time and the loudness of sound resumes, as we once again enter into none existence. Or perhaps we do not cease to exist in all forms. It seems far more likely, given the number of times life likely came to be in even our own universe, that there are more artificial or created realities than 'natural' ones. Perhaps we are a deliberate part of a hill climbing genetic algorithm search, mapping the moral landscapes for potential consciousness from a higher plane. Who knows for sure?

We can learn much from the context of this one pulse, this one flash of light in which we live. We can infer in great detail the context in which we live, and what came before us based on the facts we see around us. We can even infer what will likely happen for a time after our demise. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=26jKx74Wc5M)

But there is no happiness to be found in truth. I have pursued many truths, and answered many of the questions I set out to find. But I do not like all, or even many, of the answers that I found. And they are often even less well received by others.

I have learned to see through much of the metaphorical matrix in all it's forms. The realities we craft to suit ourselves. I can easily detect many of the lies we tell ourselves and each other, as a nation, as a religion, the religions and claims of others, our economics, as well as the lies we tell others and even ourselves as individuals.

There is a strange beauty in viewing the clockworks of our minds, our world, and our universe (both real and virtual). But either man is not meant to live there, or it is simply not yet his time. For it is a lonely place with few or no inhabitants.

Who is ready to shed superstitions both shared and unshared? Who will surrender an only hope that isn't true? We live our lives looking forward to the day when we will win the lotto, find the perfect job or spouse, or reach a painless paradise on the other side of the sky. The lies we tell ourselves keep us going, both as individuals and as a culture and people and as slaves to those who are bent to exploit us for their own ends. Lies justify our actions, our motives, and our very being. Who is courageous, or perhaps stupid, enough to give that up?

I ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil and more. And now I understand why it requires banishment from the garden. A thing learned can never go unlearned. You cannot return to what and who you were before. It is to put childish things aside. When you see behind the wizards illusions, you can never go back to accepting them in the same way. Maybe that is not the goal.

I am tired of truth. Truth is hard. Truth is exhausting, and pursued too far is only it's own lonely reward. None will hear tell of it. And as time goes on I discover, that I too have been attached to my own lies. Only sorrow seems to comes when they are stripped away. While beautiful, few truths provide the comfort of most all lies.

If asked, I would bet most would not want to know if all they thought were actually lies, and many go so far as to even deny the possibility. Most people WANT to be lied too. Many truths will make you hated, and many lies will ingratiate you.

We live in a dream world. A dream of our own making. Waking from this dream in more than the slightest degree is so damaging and painful we cannot take it. Our minds have evolved for the Matrix, even as it has evolved for us. We are a symbiosis, us and the machine of culture and industry and society. The public dreams informs us and shape us even as we shape it. That pseudo reality we share, replicated over the inefficient network packets of words in speech, or the net, forms the somewhat shared dreamscape that allows us to function as a whole. One body, one being, one species, one civilization, one plant with each of our dream pods sprouting upon a single tree.

Life is but a dream. One we were not designed yet (if ever) to wake from. Lies, make the world go around. If you doubt me, ask yourself: what if you had to choose between that which is most important to you, and opposing truth? What if what you claim is truth, isn't? The fact that they even *could* come into conflict is a truth most cannot, or will not, acknowledge. Maybe that is how it should be.

Friedrich Nietzsche supposedly went insane when he allowed himself neither the escape of religion, nor any other mind altering substance, choosing instead to face the harshness of reality. In my own experience, the more I seek truth, the more my mind demands an escape, I require a dream state, in real sleep or dissociation.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociation_(psychology)) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depersonalization) The more I know about the world, the less real it becomes. The less attachment I have to it.

It seems our form of life requires the dream like escapes portrayed in 'Big Fish', 'The Bridge to Terabithia', 'Finding Neverland', and 'Sucker Punch'. I may have denied mine for too long.

All is meaningless, said the teacher. For with great wisdom comes much sorrow. The more knowledge, the more grief.

Meaningless! Meaningless! says the Teacher.Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.What do people gain from all their laborsat which they toil under the sun? Generations come and generations go,but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun sets,and hurries back to where it rises. The wind blows to the southand turns to the north;round and round it goes,ever returning on its course.All streams flow into the sea,yet the sea is never full.To the place the streams come from,there they return again. All things are wearisome,more than one can say.The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing.What has been will be again,what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.Is there anything of which one can say,Look! This is something new?It was here already, long ago;it was here before our time.No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to comewill not be rememberedby those who follow them.